First Draft

Well, here it is, the first draft of my third novel, completed today at 1:47 p.m. When I spanked its newborn ass, it had come in at 466 pages and approximately 116,500 words.

But the real work has just begun, as now I get to dive into it red pen first and start sculpting this thing into something that can compete in the market. Admittedly, this second step in the process is my favorite, and this will be the first time that I've written a draft from start to finish without obsessively going back and re-working every page before moving forward. The idea here is that now I should be able to edit the book objectively and take the ride almost as if for the first time, finding out what works and what doesn't, what characters need to be flushed out, and most importantly, if I've been successful in saying what it is that I wanted to say.

Not a bad way to end the week!